New guys invigorated Chargers' boss

Mike McCoy was introduced as the head coach of the San Diego Chargers on Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2012. He is shown here with Chargers President Dean Spanos, left, and GM Tom Telesco.
— K.C. Alfred / UT San Diego

Mike McCoy was introduced as the head coach of the San Diego Chargers on Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2012. He is shown here with Chargers President Dean Spanos, left, and GM Tom Telesco.
— K.C. Alfred / UT San Diego

It took just a few minutes sitting with him in a courtyard inside the Arizona Biltmore on Tuesday to see this. The owner of the Chargers might be closing in on 63 years old, but he appears in mannerism and tone to be getting younger.

“Sure it has,” Spanos said when asked if it was fair to say hiring a coach and general manager, who both happen to be more than 20 years his junior, has given him new vigor. “Absolutely. Attitude is everything. We had (the same) situation for a long period of time. You never really know exactly what you have until you have changes. Changes were made, and there a new energy around the club right now, a new attitude. You can see it. It’s at a very high level right now.

“There is more enthusiasm than I’ve seen in a long time. It’s not like, ‘Oh well, back to work today.’ It’s enthusiasm.”

It’s not a stretch to say Spanos was fairly gushing at some points during our talk during a break at the NFL owners meetings, though he stopped himself at one point to acknowledge, “Look, we haven’t won a game yet.”

No they haven’t. They haven’t had the opportunity. The season is more than five months away.

This is pretty much all we have to go on when assessing Mike McCoy and Tom Telesco.

Whether the new culture ultimately helps produce the requisite number of victories, we’ll see. Maybe this season, maybe next. If not by then, we must wonder.

For now, change seems good. But all it is, is change. McCoy knows that.

“Any time anyone goes into a new organization or any business as a leader of the business, there are going to be changes,” the coach said Tuesday. “And everyone is going to have to adapt to change — right, wrong or indifferent.”

Everything I hear from all corners of the building is how inclusive and positive and full of life the new Telesco-McCoy tandem is — that they have transformed the environment from stale to fresh in every department. Multiple people have conveyed to me that McCoy makes the custodial staff feel it is crucial to the Chargers winning the Super Bowl.

There is no discounting the role that Telesco holds in building the team and setting a tone, but when talking about image building both publicly and within the walls of team headquarters, there is no one more important than the head coach.

And as far as McCoy’s charisma goes, I have to go on faith. I find him boring, devoid of candor, incapable of giving even the slightest sincere assessment of his team or his players.

But that is neither here nor there. He will keep his job — or not — based on the number of times he wins over the next three to four years. His level of openness and ability to be interesting with the media or public is mostly irrelevant. (And, in fact, I figure to have a lot of fun with McCoy’s banality and unparalleled ability to string together clichés.)

Speaking for Spanos, my impression is his being keyed up is almost as simple as the fact he has emerged from being part of a trio of old men that ran the Chargers to having become the elder in a pack of young guns.

“When you come to work every day there is so much excitement,” Spanos said. “I love going into Tom’s office. And Mike — I don’t know how to describe it — he walks down the hallway and he’s talking to everybody, he’s engaging and (saying), ‘We’re going to win,’ It’s not fluff. It’s not bull. It’s sincere. Everything is so different. It’s exciting. It’s a youth movement.”

Why should you care that the boss is happy? Because it’s a sign, that’s all.

Said Telesco: “People feed off above. He’s the top guy.”

I know a bunch of you don’t care for ol’ Dean-o, but he is the one with the final say on the football team you do care about. And right now Spanos would buy McCoy and Telesco a Shetland pony to trot around Chargers Park if either one asked.

Take for instance the team’s practice fields. They have long been uneven, mostly yellow and basically horrible for years. Norv Turner used to lose sleep over their condition.

McCoy and Telesco said the fields needed replacing.

A half-million or so later, it was done.

“You look at something long enough and it starts looking OK to you,” Spanos explained. “Now you have new people come in and they go, ’Oh my God, this is terrible. We need to make some changes.”

The Chargers spent a few hundred thousand dollars more for new paint on some walls, new pictures in the hallways and to replace about half the weight room equipment.

That’s all well and good. It’s sometimes the little things that make a big difference in how people feel about themselves and their work environment.